"How was he the last time you saw him?" Susanna asked Ginny, who was arranging a slice of salmon on a piece of bread. I hoped she would not ask me that question.
"I was here for Christmas," Ginny said quietly, "just before I met Mark." The new boyfriend in Maine who was expected on Swansea later that night, on the last ferry. "I didn't know there was anything wrong between Daddy and Sophy. They seemed the same to me. But it was wicked gloomy here, the way it is in winter. I never understood how you could take it."
"I couldn't very well," I said. "Your dad didn't mind the isolation the way I did."
"After you guys split up, I called him every few weeks from the TV station. He didn't say a lot. I didn't either. He wasn't the easiest person to talk to if you were related to him. I spoke to him a few weeks ago about my coming here next month with Mark. I guess I knew he was having a hard time, but he'd had them before and always pulled through."
Then she looked at me. I understood it was my turn, and I remembered the famous short story by Shirley Jackson, about the quaint New England village where every year there'd be a town lottery on the village green, and the loser would be stoned to death. But that was a parable, wasn't it?
The next voice we heard, an exuberant waitress's trill, was Clare's, calling from the cracked-open kitchen door. "Does everyone want decaf?"
I should have been relieved by her interruption, but it was the screechy off-note she often struck. Almost everyone nodded. She planted herself at the door and counted us with her forefinger, like the teacher on "Romper Room." When she retreated, I still didn't know how much of the story, of all of the stories I knew about Will's last days, I was going to tell.
"The last time I saw him was the day I left the island in March. We were in the driveway, my rented car was packed, the wind was blowing hard. Will looked like a dog who knew it was going to be left. I'd known for weeks that I was going, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it when the time came. He walked me to the car, and when I opened the door, a map flew out and blew across the yard. He ran after it, reflexively, and then was very sheepish when he handed it to me. The map was the evidence that I was leaving, that I was really going away without him. He closed his eyes, because he was starting to cry."
To his daughters, I said, "I hope you don't think it was easy for me to leave."
"We don't," one of them answered, though I didn't know who, because I'd closed my eyes the way Will had. "We knew it wasn't," the voice said softly, whoever was speaking in the royal we, as twins often do, certain each speaks for the other.
"The last time we talked was a few days before he died. He owed me some money from our health insurance. That's what we talked about. He didn't want to give it to me because he was mad about the divorce. It wasn't exactly a fight." It was less wrenching to talk about the money, or wrenching in a different way: how I wish those had not been our last words. "At the end of the call, he agreed to send me the money. When it didn't come, I called and left messages on the answering machine. I thought he'd changed his mind."
"I saw an envelope addressed to you on Daddy's desk," Susanna said. "That must have been what it was. There was nothing inside. I checked."
"It was awful every time I spoke to him. I didn't know what to say, how to be decent and concerned without making him think that I wanted to get back together."
"He hoped you'd change your mind after the divorce," Susanna said. "He told me that once."
"He told me that, too," Ginny said.
"But we didn't think you would," Susanna said, "even though we were sad for him and wished you'd wanted to stay."
I could see that the power of what she'd said was a surprise even to her, like a mouse darting into the room. That was what it came down to, what it always comes down to, a choice as stark as death, even when you dress it up with psychology and history and evolutionary biology: you want to stay or you don't. And what I mean about the mouse was that the three of us went silent and our eyes teared up almost in unison, because Susanna had spoken so plainly-about all of us. We had retreated from Will, had kept our distance, had taken for granted that there would be time another time to apologize or reminisce or be friendly and maybe even be friends.
"There's another time," I said. "It wasn't the last time I saw Will, but it was the last time he saw me." I could see bewilderment on everyone's face except Henderson's, who merely looked surprised that I had begun down this path. I knew I didn't have to tell this story, but there were so many things I'd kept to myself, I had to make a clean breast of this, to err on the side of the truth this time. I didn't need to introduce Crystal here, but I believed I owed them a little more of myself.
"After he died," I began, "his friend Diane told me that he had gone to New York at the end of May to see me. He had told me on the phone that he wanted to come, and I'd discouraged him. It seems he came anyway, a day or two after we talked about the money he owed me, and he saw me on the street with a man I know. I didn't see him. Apparently he left the city right after he saw me and drove his motorcycle to Cambridge to tell Diane what he'd seen. He came back to Swansea the next day. Probably died a day or two after that."
When neither of them said anything, I feared I had made the wrong decision, said too much. "Was the man your boyfriend?" Susanna said finally. "The father of the little girl who was missing?"
"How did you know?"
"I heard her message on the answering machine," Ginny said. "I didn't realize it at first, but when you called the police and her father from here, we guessed."
"I didn't think you'd want to know."
"It wasn't the biggest surprise in the world," Ginny said, though I was sure I heard their disapproval in the silence that followed, the sting of betrayal, picking up where their father left off. But when I looked from one to the other, I saw them trading a look I'd call a shrugging of the eyes: Well, why not? "We talked to Daddy's lawyer this morning," Susanna said in a serious tone, with an air of confession about it. "He knew Daddy hadn't signed the final separation agreement, which means you're still married. He told us that means you can file a claim against the estate. And you'd probably get something."
"What did the lawyer advise you to do?" I asked my stepdaughters. If they were as old as I, they would have known not to answer; they would have known not to mention any of this, not to reveal their hand. But now their nonchalance about my love life made more sense. They couldn't afford to be openly outraged, even if what I'd done had led to Will's death, because they didn't want to alienate me, not if they believed I could make a claim on the estate.
"He advised us to give you a gift."
"Like the house for the summer?" So it was a bribe, not a present, letting me spend the summer in the house in which my husband had died, maybe killed himself.
"That was Mom's idea. She thought two months on Swansea would be enough of a gift to-" Ginny paused, maybe coming up against a word she did not want to admit, or not knowing the word.
"Placate me?"
"Would someone give me a hand here?" Clare called out, pushing her shoulder into the swinging door, bringing forth a wooden tray of filled coffee cups and a pie whose crusty top was seared with a Zorro-like Z.
"Here's Mom and apple pie," Ginny said and stood to take the tray from her and place it on the table.
" Warmed, apple pie," Clare boasted. "That's what I've been doing in there: stoking the fire. Why was I so sure this house came with a microwave? I could've sworn the rental agent told me it did. Just as well. I couldn't have used it with the aluminum pie tin." Now I saw all her manipulations through the most piercing lens, including her collapsing in my arms at the door and putting on this lavish spread.